3/24/01 (WhatTheyThink) iPrint announced at the end of January many changes in their strategy including management shuffles and cost cutting initiatives. Royal Farros told WhatTheyThink that they are on target to reach their goals.
“We have not had an official layoff, but I will not say that we will not have one either. Our strategy has been to examine each area of our business to see where technology can replace certain activities. We want our employee count to match our revenue path.” Farros made these comments to WhatTheyThink in early March just after the deal with Oracle was announced. “The Oracle partnership has obviously boosted our efforts to target larger accounts. Customers running Oracle systems will have immediate access to a print solution as powerful as their other Oracle applications.”
Farros said they are uniquely positioned to serve the corporate market and will make the transition very smoothly. “We have traditionally served the most demanding market out there - the SOHO market. A business card can have 10,000 permutations, and our system can handle that and more.”
Farros said before the announcement to formerly shift their focus to corporate enterprise offerings that they had already made strong inroads into many top businesses. “While we have no plans to abandon the iPrint small business solution, our revenue total in the last quarter already showed 70% from corporate accounts and only 30% from small businesses.” Regarding examples of how they have shifted from the retail market, Farros said they have ended their 18 month $8 million deal with Yahoo. “We got out after only having to spend $4 million.”
When asked if this new restructuring will require acquisitions, Farros said they are always looking. “We are always open to examine opportunities, however, our need does not relate to technology as we are already 90% there. We would look for acquisitions that focus more on a customer base.” iPrint currently has partners strategically located around the country to provide the print services for their clients. We asked if iPrint had considered acquisitions in the “manufacturing” area of their business. “We have no plans for any equity stake in our print partners. We simply plug them into our solution and our partners produce quality work for us. As opposed to Mimeo, NowDocs and ImageX - we had rather invest in process technology as opposed to using our dollars to buy printing firms or equipment.”